344 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIEIY. 



handled as carefully and tenderly as winter api3les. They bruise easily 

 and wherever bruised they will surely and speedily decay. They must 

 have a cool, dry place and it should also be dark. By cool is meant a 

 point below that which produces vegetable decay but not so cool as is 

 necessary for apples, that temperature would chill and rot them. It is 

 not necessary that they should be packed in leaves or anything of that 

 kind but they must be dry. They should be dried before being put 

 away, but the drying should be done in the shade as much as possible. 

 Sweet potatoes should never b3 piled up in any great heaps ; they keep 

 better when spread out a little so as to avoid heating. — Journal of Ag- 

 riculture' 



TOMATOES ON POLES. • ^ 



It 19 said that training tomato vines to poles is at least a pleasura- 

 ble undertaking. Its profitableness we have not seen any mention of, 

 though the Rural New Yorker says that the fruit will be very fine 

 which would be expected. Ordinarily the tomato grows well enough 

 in the old way and for domestic purposes it takes but a few hills to 

 supply the largest demand. The paper referred to, however, advises 

 people as a matter of pleasure to set poles twelve feet high and train 

 the vines to them. It says that if lateral shoots are pinched off, con- 

 fining the vines to a single stem, and securing it loosely to the poles 

 by loops, it will reach the top of the poles. As a diversion at least such 

 things are worth trying. 



HISTORY OF THE TOMATO. 



According to Dr. Sturtevant, of the New York Experiment Sta- 

 tion, in relation to the history of the tomato, it was described by Eu- 

 ropean botanists in the tenth century, and was probably grown as a 

 fruit at that period ; but in the' seventeenth century it was as yet 

 grown in England merely as an ornament. In the early part of this 

 century it was grown for the Rome and Naples markets ; the Anglo- 

 Saxon race was, probably, the last to receive it as a food, and they 

 gave it the name it bears. In the seventeenth century Spaniards, 

 Portuguese and Italians used it very abundantly. 



To this we may add, the tomato was introduced into the United 

 States early in the century as an ornamental plant, under the name of 

 Love apple. In the larger cities of the New England and Middle 

 States, and especially in the south, the tomato gradually found its way 

 into kitchens as an esculent. The taste increased under improved 

 methods of cooking. In 1831, the father (then of Newark, N. J.) of one 



